Your grief for your pet is important and valuable. Honor it.

Although most people will sympathize with a child whose pet has died, and help them with their grief, there is less sympathy for an adult in the same situation. If you have recently lost a pet, you may have found yourself feeling even more upset at this apparent callousness. It can feel as if no one understands what you are going through. But the death of a pet can affect you just as much as the death of a person.

The stages of grief apply to pets as well as people

When you are bereaved, a natural process of grief is set in motion. You have to deal with the pain and shock of loss. If you've never experienced it before, the depth of this pain can itself shock and surprise you - it's as if you did not know you could feel quite so deeply. At first, it seems as if you can think of nothing else. Every waking moment, and even your dreams, seems to turn upon the loss. This is the first stage of grief.

In the normal course of events, this first, intense, stage of grieving gradually gives way to a more generalized sense of sadness. You become more reflective about your relationship with the one you are grieving for. Life can still be a struggle, and you may feel low and lack motivation for anything. Your thoughts still constantly return to your loss. You may remain in this phase for a long time, but in due course it too passes.

Eventually, you find a way to accommodate your loss in your life. You still care deeply about the one who has gone, but you can continue with your own life, and feel able to find joy and pleasure in life again. When you remember the one who died, you focus more on the good times you had together.

And exactly the same pattern applies when an animal you have deeply loved dies.

How long does grieving for a pet take?

There is no 'fixed' time in which grieving should be 'completed'. Everyone is different, and every relationship unique. However, it can happen that grieving can so take over your life that you find it hard to function normally and do what you need to do. In such a situation, it is not a matter of 'pulling yourself together' or 'getting over it'. But what can help you through is learning how to grieve consciously.

What is conscious grieving?

Although it feels as if grief is something which just hits you from outside, it helps to understand that it is the loss which hits you. Grieving is what you do after the loss, in order to assimilate it and prepare yourself to go on with life. And because it is about what you do, you have some control over how you do it. When you consciously grieve for your pet, you take charge of your grief, rather than letting it have charge of you.

Using hypnosis to help you come through the death of a pet

It's hard to think clearly about such things when you are in a highly emotional state. So it's good to know that there are ways to help yourself move comfortably into a process of grieving well, and suitably honoring the memory of your beloved pet. Death of a pet is an audio hypnosis session which uses deep relaxation techniques and powerful therapeutic suggestion to help ease the process of grieving for a loved animal.

Just by taking the time to listen quietly to Death of a pet, you will find yourself transported to a realm of peace and calm which will soothe your heart in its pain. The principles of mindful grieving will be imprinted in your unconscious mind, so that it will feel natural and right for you to grieve appropriately and help yourself come through to a place where you can remember your pet with joy and gladness after sadness.

Download Death of a pet and resolve to truly honor the love you feel.